Technology for Teaching and Learning

Google Docs or Dropbox? SharePoint or myWPI? Researcher or Editor? Project Manager or Writer? WPI Project teams make a host of decisions behind-the-scenes of their actual project work, deciding how to organize roles within their group, and which tools will be best for their needs.  Should we have a calendar to keep track of our [...]

I recently attended a presentation entitled “Hitting the mark creating questions that generate critical thinking discussion” given by Drs. Barbara Fennema and Lou Anne Manning.  Their presentation was based off of the Elder and Paul Critical thinking framework but it referenced a resource that I had not previously been aware of: The Miniature Guide to The Art of Asking Essential Questions” (http://www.amazon.com/Miniature-Asking-Essential-Questions-ebook/dp/B0062QCP5O). [...]

Echo360, the company that powers WPI’s lecture capturing technologies, published a press release late yesterday announcing their acquisition of ThinkBinder, an online collaboration tool intended for student project teams.  ThinkBinder allows teams to have private, group-only discussion boards, file repositories, whiteboard space, and video chats - all hosted in the cloud – for managing project-related work.   This news is hot [...]

I’m not kidding when I say that three faculty members have approached us very recently with a similar teaching challenge:  How can I use technology to help with team assessment?  And here in the TTL group, we LOVE a challenge. Each professor has slightly different needs, however all centered around the desire for students in [...]

Ok Glass, show me the future. With the first set of Google’s shiny new specs being sent out to the handful of lucky applicants, it’s only a matter of time before students and instructors end up with a pair over their eyes in a class.  And while it’s tempting to label the lenses as just [...]

ru·bric noun \ˈrü-brik, -ˌbrik\ 4: a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects, or tests  (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rubric) I know, you are thinking ‘again?’  We have had several discussions on Rubrics over the past few years, but I wanted to revisit this idea and include some exciting information on rubrics and myWPI! So lets start from [...]

**BREAKING NEWS** To celebrate Pi Day, we’ve rolled out a new Blackboard feature: Inline Assignment Grading!   What does this have to do with Pi?   Absolutely nothing.   But hey, I had to acknowledge the day somehow, right? Inline Grading is an improvement (we think) to how instructors can view and provide feedback to student submissions that [...]

The use of pen-based technology at WPI breaks into three categories, as far as I can tell.  I am open to argument about this, though! 1.  Our amazing Interactive Media and Game Development courses.  I wish I knew more about what you do, but everything I see is beautiful! 2.  Writing in Class The process of [...]

The January 4th update to myWPI/Blackboard brought us some new features, including the new visual text-box editor (VTBE).   We’re very excited about the new VTBE as it introduces many improvements, including the ability to resize the text-box editor space (drag the hashmarks in the lower right-hand corner to resize your typing space) and also the [...]

My own undergraduate experience, which was so long ago that we didn’t even know the word “blog”, was full of midterm and final exams.  But of all of these tests, I remember only one: my Introduction to Biology final.  I remember it because it was multiple choice questions from the exams we had taken over [...]